Palolem

Today marks a week since we left, but it definitely feels a lot longer already! We've made a shortish hop down the coast of Goa to a place called Palolem, which is the beach the guides and books are raving about.  I'd love to show you a picture of it with us in it, but this is another internet cafe with dodgy rules.  This place has gone as far as demanding "NO UPLOADING AND DOWNLOADING" which makes any sort of use of the internet a challenge, but whatever... I'll just steal other peoples pictures for now =)

Palolem is a little villiage clustered around the road that leads from the mainland towards the sea, but the highlight is the sweeping bay lined with forest and palm trees. There are a couple of small islands at the ends of the bay which keep it quite enclosed, and Alex has already managed to get in a bit of a swim.  

The journey down was ultra lazy, we just got a guy from down the road to drive us here in his car.  He claim to be a taxi but his boss was "borrowing the proper car" for the day.  Either way it was definitely better than the 2 hour/3 bus nightmare alternative.  Weather wise its still really hot, and amazingly humid - we haven't seen any real rain for days now which might be making it worse.

The guide book served us well for the accomodation, we found a reasonable little place at the back of town for 3 quid a day, can't complain.  There definitely seem to be more tourists here than at the last place, even though its much more remote... must have something to do with the fact that its on the top 10 list in pretty much all the things to do in India lists.  Everyone is so much browner than us, so we think that puts us quite low down the travellers pecking order.  We have none of the following :

• A crazy tan
• Massive dreadlocked hair
• Lots of tatoos
• Huge necklaces

So we definitely look like the virgin travellers - tan wise the factor 50 is doing a pretty stirling job.  Alex is obviously going brown, and I'm just going different shades of red.  We may consider doing some sunbathing tomorrow to try and move us up the traveller scale a notch.

Thats about it for now.  We'll try our luck at a different internet place, hopefully they wont notice the camera and usb action next time.